I Before E, Except After C

Why Spelling Matters

Three men arrive at the gates of heaven. First, we have Butch, a car mechanic respected for his honesty. Then we have Garrett, a brain surgeon celebrated for his compassion. Last, we have George, a lawyer known for, well, being a cutthroat lawyer.

St. Peter greets them: “Welcome to Heaven. We have simplified the process of admission, so now to get into Heaven all you need do is pass a one-word spelling test. Are you ready?”

Butch says, “I’ve prepared for this moment for seventy-eight years. I’m all set.”

“Let’s begin,” St. Peter intones in a deep voice. “Spell car.”

Butch grins and says, “C-a-r.”

St. Peter smiles and says, “Excellent, Butch. Welcome to heaven.”

Addressing St. Peter, Garrett the brain surgeon says, “I’ll take my test now, if it pleases you.”

“Here’s your test,” St. Peter intones in his deep voice. “Spell love.”

The former doctor grins and says, “L-o-v-e.”

St. Peter smiles and says, “Excellent, Garrett. Welcome to heaven.” Then St. Peter turns to George, the lawyer. George is muttering to himself, “Boy, this is gonna be a walk in the park. Who would have thought it? I’m sure ready to turn the table on all those lawyer jokes.” George turns to St. Peter and says, “Give me my test.”

“Okay,” St. Peter says. “Spell prorhipidoglossomorpha.”

Hey, you never know when those spelling skills will come in handy.

Thomas Jefferson knew a great deal, which is why we name so many schools after him. He even knew the importance of spelling, saying, “Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled. And if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to spell well.” Indeed it does.

Dumb and Dumber (or Is That Dum and Dummer?)

Someone in serious spelling denial sent me this e-mail. (He really did. I couldn’t make this up, even really late at night.):

Many peeple are abel to perform their jobs well even though there spelling is atrocous. I have never expereinced a problem because of my spelling in a vareity of jobs. I suppose some jobs are closed off to me, but for that matter many jobs are closed off for other reesons, such as the fact that I cannot do caluclus, I know nothing about banking, and I do not speak Urdu. Perhaps an inubility to spell would have had more sereush consequences before spell checkers became ubikuitous. Nowadays spelling is about as usefull as knowing how to shoe a horse. Thank you.

No, thank you, dear writer. Please continue feeling this way. It helps keep editors and copyeditors employed. It also opens up a lot of jobs for those of us who can spell even if we can’t do calculus, know nothing about banking, and don’t speak Urdu.

Tragically for the world but fortunately for those of you who have bought this book and will soon be accomplished spellers, my anonymous e-mail buddy isn’t the only one afflicted by poor vowel movements. As a result of e-mail, text messaging, Blackberrys, the decline of reading, poor teaching, and of course rock ’n’ roll, a staggering number of people can’t spell. Spell-checkers are useless because poor spellers often can’t distinguish correct from incorrect words. (Besides, cell phones and Blackberrys don’t come with spell-checkers.)

Just as a spot on your tie or a stain on your pants can destroy the good impression you’re trying to make in person, so can a spelling error destroy the good impression you’re trying to make in writing. What happens when a letter/e-mail/term paper/résumé has a whole lot of spelling errors? The writer comes across as a dolt.

Buying this book is your first step to curing poor vowel movements.

How Bad Are Your Vowel Movements?

Before we go any further, let’s test your spelling health. The following chart has twelve often-mangled words. I chose these words because they’re extremely common and useful, so much so that I’ll bet you use at least one of them in school or on the job every day.

In the first column, I’ve listed a misspelled word. In the second and third columns, I have two different spellings for each word. Circle the correct spelling.

	Misspelled Word	Possible Correct Spelling	Possible Correct Spelling
1.	managment	managemant	management
2.	throuhout	thruout	throughout
3.	goverment	govrnment	government
4.	acommodate	acomodate	accommodate
5.	chocalate	chocolit	chocolate
6.	enviroment	enviranment	environment
7.	responsability	responsebility	responsibility
8.	recieve	receve	receive
9.	Febuary	Febrary	February
10.	occured	ocured	occurred
11.	officail	offical	official
12.	definately	definitily	definitely

Answers: In each case, the word in the third column is spelled correctly.

Full Disclosure

Time for a true confession: I, too, was afflicted with balky vowel movements. In my youth, I was a bad speller—a really bad speller. Even as late as high school, I mangled any word with an ie, never sure when i came before e. To make matters worse, I even argued with my beleaguered English teacher: if i really came before e, how can you explain neither, either, weird, and leisure? Of course I could never tell weather from whether, witch from which, and stationary from stationery. And what’s with their/they’re/there? You certainly didn’t want to get me started on words that entered English from foreign languages. Their spelling never made any sense at all.

Eventually I learned the error of my ways and stopped railing against the injustices of ridiculous English spelling. Instead, I simply learned to spell. As a result, I was able to become an English teacher and lead others to the Light so that they, too, could distinguish witch from which.

Next time you’re channel surfing for a ferocious, cutthroat sport, tune into the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the nation’s largest and most famous bee. At the current time, around three hundred smarty-pants kids aged ten to fifteen make the finals. Looking for an even wilder and wackier weekend? Why not learn all the words on the Scripps National Spelling Bee list? You can download the word list from www.spellingbee.com/studyaids.shtml. Knock yourself out.

Spelling = Success

So why does spelling mastery matter so much? After all, none of us plans to win the National Spelling Bee for correctly spelling the twenty-five syllable word that identifies an extinct Australian marsupial, poisonous flowering plant, or chronic sinus condition. Yet spelling really does matter. Here are my top five reasons why.

Reason #1: Poor Spelling Can Damage Your Reputation

In 2006, actress Lindsay Lohan decided to send an e-mail to the world via her Blackberry, sharing her ideas for achieving world peace. Now, no one confuses Lohan with Einstein—or even with the rocket scientists among us who can spell both “bagel” and “bialy”—but her missive was stunning in its rambling incoherence. Furthermore, the letter’s abysmal spelling astonished even those used to the ill-educated and overhyped media boldfaced names. Lohan’s sloppy e-mail damaged her reputation.

Flash back to June 15, 1992. You surely remember how Dan Quayle became a laughingstock for “correcting” a student’s spelling of “potato” as “potatoe” at an elementary school spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey. Poor spelling suggests to people that you’re ill-educated, careless, and lazy. And you are none of those.

Reason #2: Poor Spelling Holds You Back in School

Thanks to the nation’s testing mania (which I like to call “No Child Left Untested” rather than “No Child Left Behind”), children are being barraged with a nonstop volley of standardized tests. From kindergarten to graduate school, students are subjected to an unprecedented number of high-stakes tests.

The outcome of these tests can have a significant impact on Little Johnny’s or Little Janie’s future. Did you bomb the writing part of the yearly state assessment? You’re like to be forced to sweat through summer school or even to be denied entry to the next grade. Did you score poorly on the verbal part of the SAT? No hallowed ivy-covered college walls for you. Did you misspell a few crucial words on your Graduate Record Exam, Praxis Test, or any other state licensing exam? The scorer can deny you accreditation. “Any paper seriously deficient in the conventions of English” can result in its failure, according to the guidelines given to those of us who score the writing portions of national exams. And a chunk of those “conventions of English” refers to spelling.

What’s the number one reason why articles are rejected for publication? Not their content, political bias, or writing style—it’s their spelling and grammar errors.

Reason #3: Poor Spelling Holds You Back on the Job

Solid scholarly studies have shown that accomplished spellers read and speak with greater assurance than those who have not mastered spelling. The logic is unassailable: people who have mastered the mother tongue get ahead faster on the job than those who misuse and mangle the language. That’s because people who use language with assurance have greater credibility. They’re perceived as more intelligent.

An employee’s credibility is based on the degree to which the perceiver finds the individual to be trustworthy and competent in the given topic area. When you’re communicating through writing, the recipient can’t judge your appearance, vocal quality, and body language. All the recipient has are your words on the page. Poor spelling damages your credibility—no matter how much you may know about the topic.

Reason #4: Good Spelling Enables You to Read and Think More Clearly

When you can spell well, you can recognize words correctly, figure out unfamiliar words, understand more of what you read, and retain more. Learning to spell well helps you form connections between word parts too. This helps you read more quickly. The better you read, the better you think.

Reason #5: Good Spelling Enables You to Write with Precision

Our language is a hearty stew simmered with words contributed from the Greeks, the Latins, the Angles, the Saxons, the Klingons, and many other people, some of whom appeared to have had deep-seated cooking issues. But that’s the stew we’ve got, folks.

To say exactly what you mean, you need the exact word that states your meaning. Knowing how to spell many words gives you many choices, so you can use the word you need—not its first cousin.

Here are some examples:

What They Wrote	What They Meant
I recently bought this book from the estate of a deceived person.	I recently bought this book from the estate of a deceased person.
The county is holding a pubic meeting on Tuesday in town hall.	The county is holding a public meeting on Tuesday in town hall.
Nick broke his humorous bone.	Nick broke his humerus bone.

Furthermore, all words have denotations, their dictionary meaning. Many words also have connotations, subtle emotional overtones. You want to choose the words that have both the denotations and the connotations you want. You don’t want to be forced to use an imprecise word because you can’t spell the precise one. Try it now. Sort the following words according to their positive and negative connotations.

Words for thin: lean, slender, scrawny, trim, lanky, gaunt, anorexic, willowy, emaciated, slim, frail, malnourished.

lean	scrawny
slender	gaunt
trim	emaciated
willowy	frail
slim	anorexic
lanky	malnourished

“Spelling counts. Spelling is not merely a tedious exercise in a fourth-grade classroom. Spelling is one of the outward and visible marks of a disciplined mind.” —James J. Kilpatrick

Cut to the Chase

Being a good speller marks you as a person of accomplishment, sophistication, and smarts.